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narwhal23's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
716b's review against another edition
5.0
I made my husband read this book just for the pond incident between Professors Overforce and Peddick. "'Surely you must admit now that the individual and the event are not irrelevant to history,' I said, quite reasonably. And the villain pushed me in!" I will laugh at this scene forever.
“The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.”
“The reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.”
sammish's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
memphisholli's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
auricrow's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
heathere6093's review against another edition
Too many references that I didn't get and lots of Latin. It was too madcap-y for me right now. Maybe I'll pick it up some other time.
timinbc's review against another edition
3.0
OK, three and a half. Maybe four if I hadn't read Blackout/All Clear, or if I had read The Doomsday Book more recently that I actually did.
Good ideas here, and numerous nods to British culture, other novels, and all sorts of other stuff. I got all of that, I think, and enjoyed most of it.
But there are some things that I am increasingly noticing in Willis's work.
One is that she has done a LOT of research and isn't about to waste any of it by not using it in the book. I am no longer surprised to read that a certain teacup used to belong to Lady Petunia Butterthornethwaite-Pilkington - of the Northumberland Butterthornthwaites, you remember, Cicely told us that the third Lord B hired the man who invented moleskin while working on Hadrian's Wall, which kept the Romans out of wherever it was, I must call Professor Piffle and ask him -- and was found in 1976 by a retired schoolteacher searching for old Keats manuscripts after a prolonged sneezing bout kept him from his true calling as a lepidopterist, did you know that Lewis Carroll used to collect butterflies that he kept in an old leather book he bought in a dusty bookshop just down Pimple Street from old Jowett's lodgings when he was an undergraduate, and that the teacup was in fact utterly irrelevant to the plot?
Another is a stylistic thing -- perhaps a tribute to Christie and other authors - of throwing in hundreds of detours and red herrings and especially delays. It's almost Proustian when we read that -- for example -- X wants to buy a postcard in the shop ten feet away, and fifty pages later he still doesn't have the postcard, because 63 infuriating little things have happened and FOR HEAVENS'S SAKE CAN WE JUST GET ON WITH THE PLOT????
Finally, there's just too much hand-wringing, as character after character worries about time-travel problems, and whether A has met B yet, and where on earth has C got to, and why won't the gate open, and OH STOP IT!
And after all that I can't argue with this book's award.
And now, having read this one at last, I am glad I didn't read it before Blackout/All Clear, because those books have all the above annoyances with bells on. I came very close to bailing out on that series, and if I had read this one first I certainly would have bailed, awards or not. You can get too much of a good thing.
I will admit that there is a wonderful underlying concept to all these books: that time travel was invented/discovered by a genius but is mostly being operated by idiots.
Good ideas here, and numerous nods to British culture, other novels, and all sorts of other stuff. I got all of that, I think, and enjoyed most of it.
But there are some things that I am increasingly noticing in Willis's work.
One is that she has done a LOT of research and isn't about to waste any of it by not using it in the book. I am no longer surprised to read that a certain teacup used to belong to Lady Petunia Butterthornethwaite-Pilkington - of the Northumberland Butterthornthwaites, you remember, Cicely told us that the third Lord B hired the man who invented moleskin while working on Hadrian's Wall, which kept the Romans out of wherever it was, I must call Professor Piffle and ask him -- and was found in 1976 by a retired schoolteacher searching for old Keats manuscripts after a prolonged sneezing bout kept him from his true calling as a lepidopterist, did you know that Lewis Carroll used to collect butterflies that he kept in an old leather book he bought in a dusty bookshop just down Pimple Street from old Jowett's lodgings when he was an undergraduate, and that the teacup was in fact utterly irrelevant to the plot?
Another is a stylistic thing -- perhaps a tribute to Christie and other authors - of throwing in hundreds of detours and red herrings and especially delays. It's almost Proustian when we read that -- for example -- X wants to buy a postcard in the shop ten feet away, and fifty pages later he still doesn't have the postcard, because 63 infuriating little things have happened and FOR HEAVENS'S SAKE CAN WE JUST GET ON WITH THE PLOT????
Finally, there's just too much hand-wringing, as character after character worries about time-travel problems, and whether A has met B yet, and where on earth has C got to, and why won't the gate open, and OH STOP IT!
And after all that I can't argue with this book's award.
And now, having read this one at last, I am glad I didn't read it before Blackout/All Clear, because those books have all the above annoyances with bells on. I came very close to bailing out on that series, and if I had read this one first I certainly would have bailed, awards or not. You can get too much of a good thing.
I will admit that there is a wonderful underlying concept to all these books: that time travel was invented/discovered by a genius but is mostly being operated by idiots.
przela71's review against another edition
4.0
I really liked the light hearted feel to this book compared to the other Oxford time travel stories. The story was fun and the characters were very likeable.
miminku's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.25
hedgielib's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5